


i'm at war in my own head

by dangerdays



Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys (Album)
Genre: Angst, Cissexism, Happy Ending, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Misgendering, Trans Character, Transphobia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-02
Updated: 2015-07-02
Packaged: 2018-04-07 06:47:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,850
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4253427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dangerdays/pseuds/dangerdays
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>ghoul is a trans boy and even though the zones are a great place to rebel against everything that upsets you about gender, he still runs into people who aren't exactly understanding of him yet.</p>
            </blockquote>





	i'm at war in my own head

**Author's Note:**

> "everybody's got something to say; so concerned with the life i've made. you wear us down with your fear and hate. i'm unimpressed, but i'm getting weak"
> 
> funpoison comfort/hurt fic where ghoul is a trans boy and is asked invasive questions and he turns to party for help. this isn't beta'd or checked for any sort of errors, all mistakes are on me, if you see any as always tell me and i'll fix them.
> 
> general warning for transphobia, cissexism, and misgendering
> 
> title and lyrics from "neverenders" by frnkiero andthe cellabration

Ghoul knew it was a bad idea from the start when Kobra asked him to go with him to pick something up that they all needed, but mostly Kobra. He usually isn't too apprehensive about going on runs with Kobra, but today he just felt… off. He agrees, of course, he isn’t about to send Kobra out by himself--that could never end well.

"Are you sure you want to go with. I mean, you know I'm good for going by myself. I would ask Jet, but he's working on something important, and-" Kobra presses, obviously sensing Ghoul's resistance about going.

"Shut up, Kobra. You know I always want to ride--even if it's somewhere relatively close. A ride is a ride. Plus Party would kill me if he found out I let you go somewhere by yourself," Ghoul laughs but he's hardly joking. He can never tell if all of them treat him like this because they feel like they need to, because of what he is, or he's just imagining it. "I need to get out anyway." He shrugs and Kobra decides to drop it, getting on his bike.

Ghoul pulls on his helmet and gloves and lets Kobra lead this time. He isn’t really in the mood to be reckless and waste battery by speeding out of there without a care in the world. He usually doesn’t even wear a helmet just so he could feel the wind whip through his hair--so he's forced to think about something else that isn’t how small he feels for once.

They both get there pretty fast. Too fast, for Ghoul's tastes--he likes to be able to have time to think and map interacting out in his head before he goes somewhere. He doesn’t think too much about it when he's turning off his bike and putting the kickstand down that wouldn’t be able to actually do anything on such an unstable surface like sand, but Jet fixed that.

He pulls off his helmet, not bothering to fix the helmet hair he's probably rocking with just enough time to catch up with Kobra who's already making his way inside to get what they came here for. He doesn’t know what that is, actually. Now that he thinks about it.

"Ah, what are we--" he gets cut off a little by someone bumping into his shoulder walking by pretty hard, but he brushes it off as nothing. He clears his throat and closes the small distance between him and Kobra by jogging. "Here for exactly?" he finally gets out and Kobra just looks at Ghoul out of the corner of his eye, but doesn’t answer. Okay.

Ghoul is suddenly hyperaware of all the eyes on him. There aren't a lot of people here like it feels like, but it still feels like too many. It's kind of like a flea market in a way, a place for people looking for scrap metal and spare parts and occasionally something more useful. Even though scrap metal and spare parts are useful--they just need something more sometimes.

Kobra makes a sharp turn that Ghoul hardly makes with him and suddenly Kobra is pulling him into one of the tents that are all lined up where they turned. Ghoul wonders how long it takes them to pack up when they know they're about to be raided or something.

The inside of the tent was nothing special; it was pretty big, though. There were chairs lined along each side for people to sit for when they waited, Ghoul guesses. He follows Kobra to the counter near the end of the tent and he flinches a little when Kobra whistles to get the tent owners attention.

Kobra mumbles something about them always taking so long when someone who looks like they dress with their eyes closed walks up and smiles nervously, murmuring something that sounds like an apology. Kobra wastes no time with small talk, per usual.

"Is Petrol here?" he asks, keeping contact with the obvious new guy behind the counter. The guy nods and turns around to call Petrol over. He says sorry again and inches over when Petrol comes to the counter, eyeing Kobra and smiling wide.

They start talking but Ghoul tunes out when he turns and sees the rookie staring at him with wide eyes. Ghoul kind of steps out from behind Kobra so he could get a better look at the rookie, and he must have noticed Ghoul doing it specifically to get a closer look, because he's shifting his eyes away and avoiding Ghoul's gaze.

"Can I help you?" Ghoul asks, knowing he probably shouldn’t start today--or ever. But he can't help it, he's so on edge today and he doesn’t need people looking down on him when they don’t even know him. He doesn’t even have a vest; he looks pretty sunburned--like he's been outside all day.

Maybe he's newer than Ghoul thought, he remembers being pretty burned by the sun when he first left the city and he didn’t know a thing about dressing appropriately for it. He certainly isn’t dressed like he wants to fit in at all.

"Oh--um… no I--" he's stuttering and tripping over his words, and clearly doesn’t want any trouble. Ghoul isn’t giving him any, but if he's going to be gawking and giving Ghoul nasty stares he obviously wants to know something or whatever. The rookie's eyes shift slowly back to Ghoul's and he can hear Kobra and Petrol's conversation slowly die out and then he can feel both sets of eyes on him and the rookie.

"I just wanted to know… is it true?" the rookie asks, his eyes still wide. Ghoul can't tell if it's some sort of defect or he's genuinely that curious and or amazed by whatever the hell it is he's talking about.

"What?" Ghoul responds.

"Is it true? I mean the thing about--you know."

"I don’t."

The rookie flushes a little. He must know he's out of bounds and out of the corner of Ghoul's eye he can see Petrol giving the rookie a knowing look. It's too late for him to back down now; he wants to know what this guy is on about.

"The thing about you really being a girl."

Ghoul's heart feels like it's in a vice grip and he can hardly breathe. What the fuck? How does he know? He doesn’t know fucking anything. Are BL/I releasing that information to the public to humiliate him to try and keep riots died down? Fuck. He doesn’t even get to respond because Petrol walked over to the rookie and scolded him immediately.

"Patrick." His voice is the sternest Ghoul has ever heard, and it's a little weird that he doesn’t even have a code name yet. "You can't ask that kind of shit, what the hell, dude?" Petrol scolds him like a child, and Ghoul is too shell shocked to even think about making fun of him for it like he usually would. Ghoul is pretty sure he doesn’t have to announce him having to leave, seeing as his eyes are already starting to sting from the tears that are seconds from falling down.

He turns on his heel, remembering exactly where they both parked, how to get there and everything. He doesn’t need Kobra's guidance this time, he doesn’t care about all the judgmental stares he's receiving for crying--or the fact that _Patrick_ probably told everyone he knows about his past.

Ghoul gets to his bike in no time and literally doesn’t care enough about his well being or safety enough to put on his helmet before kicking it on and tearing out of there. He pretends he doesn’t see Kobra barely getting to his bike in time before Ghoul is already too far off to be chased after in his side view mirror.

He keeps his thighs closed tight around the helmet in his lap while he pulled onto the little amount of cement in the front the diner that he and Jet laid out a long time ago so they could park their bikes without having to worry about the kickstands giving out because of the instability of the sand. He turns off his bike and slides off, not even bothering to go in through the front like he usually does. He slips in through the garage and into his room to be alone for however long he needs.

It won't last, he knows this. But he'll take as much as he can get.

He stubbornly sits down on the edge of his bed instead of just flopping face first into it like usual and runs a hand through his hair. It doesn’t help that he puts little to no effort into presenting _male_ ; he can't expect everyone else that’s left out here to understand like his brothers do. To not care like his brothers don’t. To not ask personal, invasive questions about what's in his pants.

He keeps running his hands through his hair and thinking about how he should cut it all off--maybe he wouldn’t get side glances and snide remarks about how long hair isn’t _manly_.

His breathing is ragged and he can't calm down for the life of him. Everything running through his mind about people making fun of him behind his back for what he is--for what he _was_ \--is just making him cry harder.

He can't miss the quiet footsteps of Party coming down the hall and into Ghoul's room. Ghoul doesn’t turn around to see Party like usual, he just keeps pulling at his hair and glaring holes into the wall. Ghoul hopes he takes the hint and leaves him alone because he really isn’t in the mood, but of course he doesn’t, and comes to sit down on the edge of the bed near Ghoul. He pulls at his hair hard and gets up and sits himself farther away from Party to the point where he's nearly falling off the bed.

Ghoul doesn’t even feel like putting in the effort of telling Party to fuck off, so he doesn’t. He keeps his eyes plastered on the boring white wall of his room and hopes that maybe Party will leave so he can be alone.

"You're--" he hears Party cut himself off, like he was mulling the words over again in his head, just to be sure. "You're not hurt or anything right? I don't need to call a doctor or anything?" Ghoul decides it'd be over with faster if he was as easy as possible and wasn’t stubborn and silent, so he just shakes his head silently, his long hair falling in his face and hopefully hiding how red it was from crying.

"Then you've got to tell me what's wrong," Party presses, his voice quieter than it was before. "You went out with Kobra, didn’t you? Did something happen to him?" Ghoul can hear the tension in his voice, but he knows the questions are mandatory, albeit a little irritating. He ends up scooting a little closer to Ghoul, and Ghoul doesn’t feel the need to scoot farther away and just end up falling off the bed because he's already so close to the edge, so that's a start.

Party knows pretty much everything Ghoul has been through, everything that causes him to flinch at loud noises and sudden movements, especially when he's already in a bad place mentally. He remembers how Party Poison and his boys first picked Ghoul up he wasn’t able to hang around anyone except for Party for long periods of time, and how he was hardly able to go on runs with the rest of them because the sounds of the bikes starting up or hand signals they used would send him into an episode or freak him out too bad. Ghoul is angry that he's suddenly reminded of this because of the current situation he's in, and just pulls at his own hair a little rougher and let's himself breathe out shaky and uneven.

Ghoul shakes his head at the question anyway, taking his own hand away from his hair just so he could comb through it again, so it's out of his face, and he could pull a little harder. If the fact that he was crying wasn’t obvious before, it sure as hell is now. He can feel Party's eyes on him, examining and trying to take all of Ghoul in, like maybe that'll help or something. It only makes Ghoul feel like exploding out of his skin, but he keeps his mouth closed.

"Ghoul…" Party starts, and it only makes the need to cry flare up, and Ghoul can't help but let out a ragged sob. Party shushes him and makes soothing sounds until Ghoul gathered himself and fell back into the uneven, shaky breathing instead of outright sobbing.

"It's okay," Party says, and his voice is hardly above a whisper. "You know me, right?" Ghoul has to hold his breath and think about this, and he just ends up actually sitting up and turning towards Party with wet red-rimmed eyes. He ended up just letting his hand fall into his lap instead of being fisted into his own hair, and he can't even bring himself to care about how ridiculous his hair must look because of his episode.

"I go through so much fucking shit, right? And you never fault me for it." Ghoul nods, letting his eyes cast downward. "And you know I'd never, _ever_ do that to you, right?" Ghoul looks less certain about this one, he starts to worry his lip between his teeth, and Party looks like he wants to reach out and hold his hands or something.

"You're like… I don't want to say my brother, 'cause that's really weird, considering..." He waves his hands around, and Ghoul smiles weak. "But you are. You're like my best fucking friend, okay? How many times have I fucking wrecked someone 'cause they were being awful to you?" Ghoul tries to mumble something like 'a lot' but it just comes out garbled and wet from crying, but Party looks like he understands.

"The point is that… I wouldn't fight people tooth and nail for you if I was gonna wait 'till we were alone to make fun of you, right?" Ghoul nods again, breathing shaky still. "You don't have to tell me why you were crying, if you don't want to, or where you guys were, or anything like that." Party says, scooting a little closer. "But if you want, I can--I can listen to you. Or you can give me a name, and I'll pound some front teeth in! Which you _know_ I would love," Ghoul laughs a little, and it's breathless and small.

Ghoul feels like he's on the verge of bursting into a thousand tears, but he bridges the gap between him and Party that he knows he was leaving on purpose, so now their thighs are touching. Ghoul ends up going back to tugging at his hair, gentler now, and tries to focus on just breathing.

"You don’t have to talk about it, but I'm not going to go sit in my room and pretend like nothing's happening to you when you're in here crying," Party's voice was stern, but it didn’t make Ghoul feel threatened or anything. He doesn’t respond and just keeps running his hands through his hair, waiting for Party to finish talking.

"I'll stay with you 'till you feel good enough that you can tell me to fuck off, okay?"

“Okay.” Is all Ghoul manages to respond with. He feels tired and awful, and he knows that he shouldn’t be shoving Party away at an arm's length all the time.

He thinks back to when they were all younger, God, they were all so young, even Jet, who somehow managed to be the big brother to everyone when Party was the leader. He’d told Jet first because of that, because he always knew Jet would never turn his back on Ghoul as long as he was too young to fend for himself.

He'd been crying a lot, and Jet had promised him that out here, it was different. These kinds of things were normal out here, and no Drac or Crow would pop out of nowhere and send you off to the clinic for being who you really were.

But it was Party who had turned it into poetry. He doesn’t know how, but he has a touch. Everything he touches turns to art, and when Ghoul had told him, his eyes had lit up.

They were younger, only 16 then, and Party still had scars of his own from doctors, but he still turned it into art. And he was a fighter, whenever someone gave Ghoul a funny look, shoved him to his knees in the dirt, Party was there, digging those fucking sharp teeth into their skin 'till he tasted blood. He reminded Ghoul that he was incredible, a living, breathing revolution, and that was incredible. It made Ghoul feel funny inside, to watch the way Party’s eyes lit up when he talked about how BLI would hate them for what they were doing.

So he doesn’t know why he feels like he can’t tell Party what happened. _Cause nothing really happened_. It was just harmless questions, weird questions, the feeling of being outed to people he doesn’t even know. Who told him? Was it Kobra? Petrol? Or just word of mouth? His chest starts to tighten up again, and Party seems to notice the shift in mood.

“Hey, hey--you’re with me now okay? Whoever, whatever it is isn’t here,” His voice has this weird quality of being soft and soothing when he’s calming Ghoul down, instead of loud and bossy like he normally is.

“It’s just fucking stupid.” Ghoul moans, voice kind of weak. “Nothing even happened.”

“Clearly something happened.” Party says. Ghoul should have known he wasn’t going to believe the usual shit.

“It was just…some… rookie. Kobra was doing that thing. We went out to get parts and everything was loud. He whistled and that scared me, and then someone I didn’t know came up to me, and he was asking me all these questions.” Ghoul stops, and sucks in a shaky breath. “And Kobra didn’t say anything--fucking--Pete called the guy out on it but I just felt so… disgusting--fake and wrong, so I had to leave. I don’t know where Kobra is, he was chasing me down after I ran out of there but I was too fast.”

“Ghoul…” He sounds so soft; Ghoul doesn’t look at him because he knows that his eyes are probably doing that thing where they get huge.

“I just felt so disgusting. If I wasn’t…he wouldn’t have asked me those questions if I was…” He can feel the tears well up in his eyes. “If I was really a boy.”

“Look at me, Ghoul.” He doesn’t. He keeps his eyes firmly fixed on the floorboards and how dusty they are. “Please.”

He finally finds it in himself to tear his eyes away from the floor, despite the fact that he’s terrified that the tears will overwhelm him.

“You’re very real.”

Ghoul whimpers a little. “It doesn’t feel like I am.”

“I know.” Party says softly, scooting almost impossibly closer. Ghoul lays his head on Party's shoulder; he can feel how smooth his skin is, probably because he never goes outside without his fucking jacket on. He takes a deep breath, and Party smells like hot sand and a little bit like soap and gas.

“But you are. I promise, you’re as real as anybody. We’re all real, out here; whoever you were doesn’t matter anymore. It shouldn’t. That’s what being a zonerunner is about. It’s about being yourself, no matter what the city, or other people try to tell you. And if they forgot that, or if they aren’t true to that, the desert will eat them alive. Unless I get to them first.”

Party gives Ghoul an awkward side-hug type of thing; he knows that if he weren’t lying all over him Party would be hugging him so close he couldn’t breathe. “And you having long hair doesn’t change that, you’re fucking real. And anybody who thinks different can fuck themselves, and if they want to take it up with you then they have to take it up with me too.”

“You really mean it?” Ghoul finds himself asking before he can stop himself. He knows he must sound so pathetic, but Party doesn’t even miss a beat responding.

“On my mother’s grave,” He says solemnly. “Now c’mon. I want to take the car for a spin and I need someone to pick out the music.”

Ghoul stands up kind of shaky, rubs his nose on his hand. “I’m not listening to Ziggy Stardust again.” He mumbles and his voice is kind of shaky. He really loves that Party just bounces back when he knows Ghoul needs a break from intensity of feeling things. And he knows that nothing makes Ghoul feel better like a joyride.

“But that’s the best Bowie album!” Party insists, grabbing his jacket off the floor. He shakes it, and the keys jingle inside.

“I know, but we listened to that last time. I want something new.” Ghoul follows him out the door; and Party is twirling the keys and already humming the bridge to a song Ghoul hasn’t heard yet.

“I heard Tommy got the new Mad Gear stuff, if you want to go take a look at that.”

“Fuck yeah!” Party says, and jumps about a foot in the air. Ghoul laughs; nothing makes him happy like Party enjoying the simple things in life. It helps remind Ghoul that there is so much to be happy about actually, that he just kind of has to take a page from Party’s book and find the beauty in everything sometimes--the beauty in your favorite garage punk band releasing a new record.

While he’s thinking, Party turns around and kisses him right on the mouth. “I love you.” He says, simply, and climbs in the front of the car. “Now come on! They’re gonna be out of it by the time we get there.”

Ghoul climbs in the passenger seat, and turns to look at Party, who is leaning up over the wheel, getting ready to start the car. He’s smiling wild, and Ghoul smiles back, even though his happiness is directed at everything, and Ghoul is part of that everything, a huge part of it. It’s incredible, to be a part of that.

“Thank you.” He says, and Party just turns the key in the ignition, and the engine rumbles loud in their ears.

“Anything for you!” He shouts over the roar, and slams on the gas.

Ghoul leans back in the seat, and starts to fiddle with the radio. He knows that Party means it.


End file.
